Search

Irish agency Simply Zesty posted a list of “9 Impressive Social Media Campaigns Using Video” recently. They all are certainly impressive as they go well beyond just sending out a tweet or posting an article on Facebook. That being said there was a pair of videos from that list that really stuck out to me.

LIVE INTERACTIVE MURALS
The Canadian tourist board wanted to use social media to promote Canada as a holiday destination for their friends to the south. They could have paid for promoted tweets or started a vacation album on Flickr. You wouldn’t show up on any lists for being impressive if you did that though. Their idea was to install giant interactive murals in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. These murals featured streaming tweets and photos from tourists currently in Canada. To take it even a step further people could walk up to them and move the streams or click to enlarge items.

What I love about this campaign isn’t just the interactivity. I’m always a fan of that. I also love the concept of taking the online offline or vice versa. It’s that sort of thinking that took this idea to the next level. Separately, they’re not unique. The online aspect is basically just a search stream, while the offline component would be just another digital poster. Together, and with a little wow factor, they create a buzz worthy campaign. While the video isn’t the main focus it’s a great complimentary piece. Even in a high traffic area once the murals are taken down the exposure is over. Creating a video about the campaign creates great lasting power and earned the Canadian tourist board an extra 50k eyeballs through YouTube alone.

INTERACTIVE ZOMBIE STORY
Does anyone remember those choose your own ending books? I used to love it when they did that with Goosebumps books. I used to always choose the path that would surely kill me so I could cover every possible scenario. New Zealand based pizza parlor Hell Pizza decided to take that choose your own ending style of storytelling and make an interactive Youtube video with it. With the introduction of annotations on Youtube you can watch a video then select what you want to see next given the options. The Hell Pizza film “Deliver Me To Hell” is about a delivery driver who needs to ship his pie without being eaten by zombies!

If you’ve got twenty minutes or so this could be the most entertaining use of them. Once again, props for interactivity. By focusing on building an immersive story (even if it’s pretty silly) you can go beyond brand awareness and affect behavior in the short term. You bond with the characters on your journey to deliver a Hell pizza. It’s funny, engaging, quirky, and highly contagious (see what I did there). If they opened a Hell Pizza near me I’d be first in line. Good marketing shouldn’t go without praise! As of today “Deliver Me To Hell” part 1 has over 5 million views on YouTube.

Make sure to check out the rest of the top 9 here and don’t be afraid to send your own favorite social media or interactive campaigns to Rated JPG.